Colophon

Art Texts Pics is an online magazine published both in Italian and in English. Established in 2010, Art Texts Pics contains interviews, conversations, essays, exhibition previews and event agendas. The magazine covers both well known, institutional realities – such as museum exhibitions, established galleries and foundations – and alternative, young spaces.

dicembre 2, 2015

Elena Bordignon

Petrit Halilaj, They are Lucky to be Bourgeois Hens, 2008 (detail) Courtesy the Artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Photo Agostino Osio

Petrit Halilaj, The places I’m looking for, my dear, are utopian places, they are boring and I don’t know how to make them real, 2010 (detail) Courtesy the Artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca - Photo Agostino Osio

“Space Shuttle in the Garden” brings together and connects, for the first time, a selection of works by Petrit Halilaj (1986, Kosovo) from recent years as well as new ones conceived specifically for the occasion. Setting out from the life and history of the artist and from the changes that have occurred in his native country, the exhibition explores universal themes such as memory, the search for identity, and the concept of home as both a shared and private space, arriving at reflections on community and on the creation and preservation of a common cultural heritage.

ATP: Let’s start from the title; what is the reference for “Space Shuttle in the Garden”? Why did you choose it?

Petrit Halilaj: The title originally comes from a drawing from 2009 and it is a reference to the series “They are Lucky to be Bourgeois Hens.” But I also have been working on another big project for this past year, a work that will get introduced in the special catalogue of the exhibition. So during the work on the show, me and Roberta Tenconi have been also thinking a lot through this new work and it has been accompanying our thoughts to a great extend. That’s why we decided to conceptualize the catalogue in two parts to reflect this process – also because many of my works are linked to each other and they feed each other often conceptually.

ATP: The exhibition at Hangar Bicocca builds its pivotal points around topics as migration and a research for an identity. Complex and actually present themes. How did you express it through your works? Could you mention some works in the exhibition where this meaning is more evident?

PH: It is obviously most present in the work “The places I’m looking for, my dear, are utopian places, they are boring and I don’t know how to make them real” (2010 – 2015). So a work that reflects very much on processes that became most present after the conflict when the long period of the official making of an independent country coincided with my own coming of age. So the house that we saw whole at the Berlin Biennale is now being allowed to be fragmented and split and it’s fine – so with its rooms free floating – some closer to the original structure, some more distant. Also referring to the processes of personal emancipation from the family, of finding one’s own way – certainly always related, but also being able to be a whole by yourself and being able to move freely in other contexts and being accepted there. And so the search for identity also for my country hopefully can now become more diverse, where also other conversations can enter that had been neglected so far and that make part of the whole even though they might float away from the original structure.

ATP: A lot of works were born from the elaboration of your personal and family life. It is not easy to work on one’s own experience. How do you process and put into effect your life and your experience in your works?

PH: Much of my work draws from my own experiences and I guess that is just how I work and how I need to work. It’s important for me to work my way through this, to understand more, to access more how theses seemingly small and personal things relate and also reflect on the world as a whole.

ATP: Could you please present us the work that first greet the visitor, They are Lucky to be Bourgeois Hens II?

PH: It was a decision that was actually made at the very beginning and it turned out to be an amazing pretext for the whole show. So you enter and see this fantastical structure – the aquarium with a feather decontextualized from its normal surrounding. Floating in the water, being moved to almost dance in it. So this connection of the feather to a pen, to a writing instrument can be made easily. So basically the writing of a letter, of a narrative starts here. This letter can contain or also obscure descriptions, stories, feelings, desires, or also wishes. You can see behind it the narrow passage to the outside area, where the space shuttle stands, a part where you arrive at the end then. And also the chickens end their day in the space shuttle – so when they gather inside getting ready for the night and the moment the door gets closed they are surrounded by this blue, so this very moment where you are between the real world and the potentialities of an infinity – so also in this blue hour, when the day is not completely gone and night has not yet started.

ATP: In the series of sculptures “Si Okarina e Runikut” you found your inspiration in ancient wind instruments dating back to Neolithic era found in Kosovo, and in Runik in particular. You personally shaped every sculpture. The works are presented as a “metaphor for the entire exhibition”. Why are these sculptures so important for you? Which are the bonds with your childhood?

PH: The metaphor rests more in the fact and my temptation to transform an instrument from personal to fulfil a choral function. So just also how the personal is affected by what is collective and around you. A quite complex relation to understand that I also felt the need to share and discuss. For me this entire show is also so much connected to this return to Italy somehow. A very central place in my personal biography and my formation as an artist and maybe the only place I was able to do a show like this, where many of my different projects come together for the first time ever and also on such a large scale. So the okarina sculptures, so small and delicate, are connected obviously to Runik, where I found inspiration for them but they are connecting so many other things for me as well, as already explained above and they also represent the step before the next work. So just like all works in the exhibition feed each other and spill into each other somehow.